Flickr has integrated geotagging features into their web site. The FlickrBlog gives the details of all the features and there is even a screencast showing how geotagging works in Flickr.
The easy way is to just open the new ‘map’ tab in the Flickr organizr and drop photos onto the map. They are promising some tools to move photos that have been geotagged using other methods including the unsightly “geotagged/geo:lat/geo:lon” tags.
Some friends had reservations for the Ohanapecosh campground at Mount Rainier National Park for the Labor Day weekend but were unable to make it and offered us their reservation. We wanted to go somewhere but had made no plans so this was a real blessing. After getting some stuff done at the office, we headed out Friday afternoon for the mountain. It took us about a 3 hours pulling the trailer to get to the campground.
After getting everything unhooked and dinner I took the Kids to the Ranger Program where they learned about the non-native plants that are ‘invading’ the park.
Saturday we visited the Sunrise Visitor Center and I took Kevin and Kyle on a hike up to Dege Peak while Von and Kirsten did the Nature Trail hike. The trail to Dege Peak starts at 6400′ and quickly climbs to the Sourdough Ridge Trail that follows the contour of the ridge for about a mile at around 6800′. A sign off the Sourdough Ridge Trail points to you to the last 0.3 miles and up the final climb to 7016’ and Dege Peak.
The hike was about 4.4 miles and took us about 2 hours to complete. Although the total elevation gain was 616’, the ups and downs along the ridge probably made the total round-trip ‘climb’ closer to 1000’.
After returning to camp from our hike up to Dege Peak we decided to see Silver Falls. You can walk from the Ohanapecosh Campground or park along Highway 123. The route from the campground is about a 3 mile loop, from the highway pullout it is less than half a mile. We decided that the shorter route was best for us. Afterwards we wondered if the level trail from the campground might have been easier on the legs that the relatively steep hike down from the highway.
The trail takes you to a log bridge that crosses the river chasm, giving a gorgeous view towards the falls. From there you can walk around to an overlook and watch the Ohanapecosh River get squeezed between rocks as it tumbles 75 feet over Silver Falls. During the spring the spray from the falls can get you wet from behind the protection of the trail barriers. The rocks were dry when we were visiting and so the boys went out on the rocks as did I to get some photos.
The October issue of Consumer Reports unveils the unethical practices of commercial data brokers. The magazine believes companies like Choice Point, LexisNexis and Acxiom are making billions of dollars for themselves at a very high cost to you.
Here’s what they’re selling:
Even worse, Consumer Reports’ report says they are selling your sensitive information to anyone with cash and sometimes the anyone in that statement are criminals looking to cause you harm.
The story notes we are all at risk of losing our privacy, of having our ID compromised through identity theft and to have our credit harmed by being reported as deadbeats and security risks when we have done nothing wrong.
Consumer Reports’ conclusion: federal laws don’t do enough to protect you.
Just saw this image from Google Maps Sightseeing showing Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi where the famous “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” photograph and which was the inspiration for the USMC War memorial in Washington DC.
Not only is it amazing that you can see actual people standing in front of the monument, but the shadow outlines the details of the monument that is not visible from overhead.
Update: Matt did not move to a different hosting service which makes it even more strange that the RSS feeds coming from the 3 blogs all broke on both my wife’s and my feed. Guess it was just something with Newsgator.
Just figured out that Matt moved his server to another provider and this broke the RSS feeds for the blogs he is hosting at Pelennor Fields, including his, Mystie’s, and mine.
At least WordPress makes it easy to re-add them - the URL for a RSS feed is simply the blog address followed by ‘/feed’ and if you want comments then you can also grab that feed by adding ‘/comments/feed’ after the URL.
Now I have the 3 lost blogs back in Newsgator, my blog feed reader.
Finally getting the books out of storage. They were placed in boxes over 2 years ago when we were looking at remodelling the house. They have found a new home in the basement.
6 shelves filled. Many more to go…
Earlier this week I was a deputy for the March of Dimes Jail & Bail. When people came to “serve their time” I would help them with the pledge sheets and cell phones that were available for their use.
It was the first time I have been involved and was quite interesting. People would ‘turn themselves in’ at the door and be taken by a real county deputy to stand before the ‘judge’ (local lawyers playing the part) who would ask them what their what they were willing to pay for bail.
After being ’sentenced’ the ‘defendent’ would get their picture taken in a striped shirt standing in front of a height chart holding one of 4 plaques that said things like “Convicted of Kindness for Babies”.
They would then be taken into the ‘jail’ where they could call friends, relatives, and co-workers to raise ‘bail money’ so they could be released. Many were quite creative when calling, starting their conversations with statments such as
I am in jail and wondering if you could help me out.
Most seemed to have a good time raising funds for the March of Dimes although I am glad I was on the ‘outside’ of the bars working and not having to raise bail!
I just ran across the PodCacher (pun intended) that bills itself as “A family friendly, weekly audio show (podcast) all about Geocaching!”. I had listened to one of the first ones but forgot about it. Listening to it again, now on show #70, I am impressed.
Some podcasts that I have listened to get boring real quickly as the host just talks on and on, but the banter between the two hosts on PodCacher keeps it interesting and they are quite entertaining.
The subjects they cover span the gamut of geocaching topics including interviews of “notorious” geocachers, stories about geocaching both locally and on trips, geocaching tools, as well as tips and tricks to finding and hiding caches.
You may think that miles-per-gallon is important but what you really are concerned with is miles-per-dollar. What does it cost you to get to work and back each day? What will it cost to drive to see your family across the state this weekend?
Now you can find out easily at the MP$ site. Sure, there are more costs to driving a car than just gas. There are things like insurance, maintenance, etc to consider but you will have to figure that out for yourself.
Our old 15 passenger van got 10 miles-per-gallon no matter what kind of driving you were doing. I finally figured out that the big engine in that thing burned the same amount of gas no matter if it was pulling a trailer up a hill or just sitting in the driveway idling. It was then that I realized that the real way to measure the fuel consumption was gallons-per-hour. I figured it burned 6 gallons per hour - which at $2.75 gallon would run me $16.50 per hour just for gas.
I am not sure I have seen any leaves changing color around my home yet, but Matt McGee definitely did here!
I really like how the red leaves stand out yet the purple leaves pull your eye.
I have a web form that gets e-mailed to me every time it is completed. I want to be able to manipulate the data that is sent to me into another format that another program can use.
I have an email that looks something like this:
==============
1. First=John
2. Last=Doe
3. EMail=JohnDoe@gmail.com
4. Phone=555-1212
…etc but more complicated…
==============
I need to convert it, merging it with some other text, to something like:
==============
gen_sFirst=John
gen_sLast=Doe
gen_sEmail=JohnDoe@gmail.com
gen_sPhone=555-1212
…etc but more complicated…
==============
I then also need to be able to pull that email address out to send a reply email.
I looked at a number of programs including:
All these programs can parse email and output the fields into other programs or to a comma delimited text file. What none of them seem to be able to do is allow me to create a ‘merged’ text file.
I then found EPGateway. ($15). EPGateway allows you access POP3 accounts to extract data from the message header or message text for use with other applications. Personalized auto responses can be created and sent based on the extracted text and on filtered conditions.
It can create and send a reply email “form letter” that can be personalized from data from the incoming email. And it can output a “merged” text file combining the extracted fields with user text just like I need.
What is strange is that I cannot get it to ‘find’ the message text! It outputs all the header variables but the message text and any data extracted from it is just blank. I have been in an email discussion with the support group and they sent me a ‘fixed’ exe file but that did not fix the problem.
Hopefully we will get it figured out so I can use this program. If I cannot get it to work I will have to find some way to automatically convert the email to a plain text file when it comes in and just write a perl script to process the text file. Then I will have to figure out how to generate the reply email.
After seeing it posted on FatWallet, I just ordered a SimpleTech 160GB network drive from Buy.com for $79.95 (no tax & no shipping & -$10 for using Google checkout). The drive plugs into your local area network so all the machines at home can use it to store common data and to use as a backup drive as suggested by consumer reports:
Consumer Reports also tested drives that can back up several computers on a home network, using either an Ethernet or a wireless connection. Among network drives, Consumer Reports recommends the 250-gigabyte SimpleShare from SimpleTech for $300.
Well, 160-gig for $80 sounds pretty good to me. Especially since reading some reviews from a last year had this same drive priced at 3 or 4 times that amount.
There is even a Tour that shows why everyone can use a shared network drive.
I will give an update after I receive the drive and put it through its paces.
couleewinds posted this great photo.
I really like the lighting, with the sun shining yet the storm in the background.
And the horse is looking straight at you…
© Used with permission
I saw this ‘poster’ after reading Matt’s Haikudos:
Year-end group meeting
Managers pontificate
Warm hugs all around(alternate ending #1: “All is vanity”)
(alternate ending #2: “Bloody waste of time”)
By the way, you can create your own demotivational posters.
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